A user sometimes needs to access and edit a variety of data files. For example, the user may need to open or edit a word processing file, a spreadsheet file, a database file, a programming source code file, a presentation slide deck, an email message file, an image file, a video file, or another type of file. Each of these data files may require a respective dedicated software application to open or edit the respective data file. Thus, the user usually needs to install the required dedicated software on a local computer in order to open the various types of data files. When a specific software is unavailable at the user's device, the user is then unable to access and operate on a certain type of data file.
When the user attempts to open and edit a data file stored at a remote server, existing document systems usually require the user to download the data file from the remote server to the user's local computer so that the user can open the data file via a specific locally installed software application. The downloading of the remotely stored data file and the requirement to locally install a variety of software applications in order to operate on different types of data files can be resource-inefficient. Moreover, when the user is operating a mobile device such as a smartphone, which lacks either the capacity to install a computer application or the memory space to download a data file, that access to the data file becomes infeasible.